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At least three days of sizzling, sunny climate are wanted to make hay, and good climate is usually in brief provide in Cumbria. We had been watching our climate apps avidly, and a window appeared. The grass had grown lengthy sufficient to make hay, the seed had set and there have been no nesting birds within the fields, so it was all techniques go.
My son had mown the grass and “scaled it out” every day. Because the grass is turned and tedded, the seeds can return to the meadow. The sheep’s hooves will trample within the seed and assist it germinate to revive the meadow. Sadly, the starter motor had gone on the tractor – all our gear is secondhand, and most of it very outdated – and I used to be queueing on the engineer’s elements counter when my son phoned to say that it was raining on the facet of Blencathra the place he was shepherding, and he was going to race house to get the hay in.
Getting the grass minimize, scaled out, rowed up, baled and saved within the barn is among the greatest and most essential jobs of the yr. Once I arrived house with the half, 4 mates from my son’s Younger Farmers’ Membership had been serving to and had already borrowed a neighbour’s tractor. We’re delightfully old school on this valley; if somebody must borrow one thing or wants assist to do a job, it’s by no means an issue. They are saying it takes a village to lift a toddler, but it surely takes farming group to get the hay in when it begins raining.
The bales had been getting barely damp, so that they had been put into the cowshed and unfold out to dry. It can take every week or so, however they are going to be effective. They’ll then be stacked in our 18th-century barn till we want them to feed sheep and goats over the winter. The scent of the hay is overwhelming within the farmyard. As quickly as you open the farmhouse door, the scent hits you. Often after haymaking, everyone seems to be so sizzling and scratched that we bounce within the river. This yr, everybody was damp, so it was cups of tea for the Younger Farmers earlier than they went to play in a soccer match at Nice Asby within the Westmorland Dales.
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